Client Story: American Electric Power
Base Two's decade-long partnership with American Electric Power (AEP) began with a small consulting role that quickly grew as we proved our value. We began by removing manual inefficiencies in AEP's inspection process and digitizing the workflow. We then developed key applications that connected multiple internal departments to address evolving business needs — improving communication and interdepartmental workflow. Our cumulative work over the past dedicated has resulted in scalable, maintainable solutions that AEP continues to use. This partnership highlights our core strengths in reliability, flexibility, scalable solutions, and trustworthy, long-term support.
Our long-term partnership with American Electric Power (AEP) highlights several of our key services:
- Discovery Consultation
- Architecture and Engineering Consultation
- Tailored Software Solutions
- Enhancement and Support
- Scalability (aligned with Architecture and Engineering Consultation & Tailored Software Solutions)
- Bridging Business & Technology (aligned with Discovery Consultation & Tailored Software Solutions)
A Small Team with Big Output
Base Two was in its early days when we first connected with AEP through a mutual acquaintance. This colleague worked within AEP and was frustrated by outdated IT systems that relied on manual data entry, spreadsheets, and paper records. He envisioned a digital solution that could streamline operations, making it easier to manage material planning and project scoping for large-scale infrastructure projects.
At the time, Base Two was a small operation, perceived by AEP’s leadership as a company with too few employees to take on a large-scale app. This underestimation worked in our favor, allowing us to take on a consulting role with minimal resistance from AEP’s internal IT team. The first project, Transmission Site Visit, transformed the inspection process by replacing paper reports with a searchable digital database, improving efficiency and accessibility.
Expanding the Scope
With the success of Transmission Site Visit, AEP brought our team back in in for a more ambitious project: PCE Scope Builder. This tool aimed to standardize how AEP engineers planned protection and control engineering (PCE) projects. Previously, each department had its own spreadsheets and methods for estimating project costs and materials to be used in field work. Scope Builder changed that by integrating project data into a unified platform.
The application was originally built in 2012 using Backbone.js with an ASP.NET backend. As AEP saw its value, they wanted to expand it to other departments beyond PCE. This led to a rewrite of the application in AngularJS to accommodate additional business needs and departments, including Station Engineering. We had to conduct deep business analysis, identifying similarities and differences between departments to create a scalable, flexible tool for all use cases.
As AEP’s technology strategy evolved, they expressed interest in using Aurelia for the TMIC project. Aurelia was a relatively new framework at the time. While our technical analysis flagged potential challenges about its limited industry adoption compared to more established options like React, Vue, and Angular, we were happy to support their direction and quickly ramped up on this newer framework to provide both technical leadership and development support.
To future-proof the system, we designed the architecture and core functionality to be as framework-agnostic as possible, ensuring flexibility in case a shift became necessary. This strategic decision paid off as AEP later chose to move in a different direction. We were able to successfully transition the codebase to a new framework without major disruption
A Tale of Two Applications: Material Order Builder vs. TMIC
While we were navigating AEP's evolving technology mandates with Scope Builder, another critical need emerged: a better system for actual material ordering. AEP's existing material ordering application left much to be desired, and they wanted something 'nice like Scope Builder.' We developed Material Order Builder (MOB) to streamline material procurement once a project scope was finalized. In contrast, TMIC was built internally by AEP’s IT team, although we provided initial architectural guidance. While both applications aimed to improve efficiency, their long-term trajectories diverged.
MOB has remained stable for over a decade, outlasting many of the systems that it integrated with. TMIC, evolving over time with multiple contributors, became increasingly slow for end users and difficult to modify.
Years later, AEP asked us to take over support for TMIC. By then, the system had accumulated enough technical debt that running it locally or making changes efficiently proved challenging. This contrast highlights the advantages of a dedicated development team ensuring long-term maintainability from the start.
The story of the relationship with AEP highlights some our core strengths:
- Scalability & Long-Term Support: We built applications that remained in use for over a decade, adapting to changing business needs and technology shifts.
- Small but Mighty: Despite being a small team, we delivered multi-million-dollar software solutions that AEP still relies on today.
- Bridging Business & Technology: Beyond just development, we played a crucial role in conceptualizing solutions, guiding AEP’s business units toward more efficient digital and analog workflows.
Without us, AEP might have continued relying on spreadsheets and fragmented processes. Instead, they gained a suite of robust, scalable applications that enhanced user trust while reducing errors. That’s the kind of partnership that we aim to build, with every client, in every project.
NetJets Client Story
A Long-term Partnership
AEP Scopebuilder
Details about the Scopebuilder Tool